Drought Assistance Pilot Program Launched

Western Australia and the Federal Government have jointly invested to trial a new approach to drought assistance aimed at preparing farm businesses and rural communities for the future challenges.With a focus on building community resilience and on-farm improvements, the approach provides a targeted funding approach based on an assessment of the identified needs of rural communities dealing with climate change and long-term climate variability.

The approach consists of seven components:

Farm Planning: assistance for farmers to undertake a program of training to enhance their skills in business planning
Building Farm Businesses: grants of up to $60,000 to help farmers better manage and prepare for future challenges
Farm Family Support: income support to help families meet basic household needs
Stronger Rural Communities: grants of up to $300,000 for eligible local groups experiencing significant hardship due to an agricultural downturn to build the resilience of their rural community and assist them to manage future hardship
Farm Social Support: a better coordinated social support network to meet mental health, counselling and social needs of farming families and rural communities;
Farm Exit Support: grants of up to $170,000 to support farmers who decide to sell their farm, including retraining and relocation expenses; and
Beyond Farming: a program for farmers who want to know more about opportunities that arise when they sell up or retire.

The pilot region has been selected based on previous recipients of Exceptional Circumstances (EC) and extends from Karratha to Esperance. Almost 6000 farmers in the trial region are expected to be eligible for assistance under the package.

According to a media release from the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) President David Crombie, the peak farming body is highly supportive of the pilot:

The new drought scheme to be trialled over 12 months in Western Australia is a sensible, practical and forward-looking approach that takes account of climate risks and proactively manages them. We all know drought relief is a stop gap measure. Farmers, the broader community and politicians are sick of arbitrary lines on maps that determine drought assistance, and which fail to account for the needs of individual farmers.

Our plan, which forms the basis for the Federal Government’s trial, is to better drought-proof Australian farms by investing upfront in on-farm climate adaptation and mitigation practices. Things we know can work.

This proactive investment in managing climate risk is designed to reduce the strain on farmers and on taxpayers during future droughts. We have long insisted that it’s smarter to invest in drought management and preparedness practices today and, over time, reduce the need for drought relief.

For years we have been calling for a shift in the policy focus from ‘drought relief’ to ‘drought management and preparedness’. Underpinned by mutual obligation, we have long asserted this requires a “generational shift in thinking and that we – as a nation – must rethink how we plan for, and deal with, drought in a changing climate”.

Piloting the scheme in a region not suffering drought gives farmers and the community a good look at how the new arrangements will work on-the-ground and, importantly, the ability to iron out any kinks well before being applied across the country.